


It's hard to dance with a devil on your back

by VileVenom



Category: Welcome to Night Vale
Genre: Angst, Based on a Tumblr Post, Cecil is Inhuman, Cecil is the kid, Desert Bluffs, Don't worry, Gen, Kid Fic, Weirdness, the steve/cecil is pretty much non-existant, this whole fic pretty much takes place there
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-30
Updated: 2013-09-30
Packaged: 2017-12-28 01:07:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,406
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/985830
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/VileVenom/pseuds/VileVenom
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Living in a small town can be hard.<br/>Living in a small town where you are not welcome is even worse.</p><p>Based loosely on a headcanon post on tumblr.</p>
            </blockquote>





	It's hard to dance with a devil on your back

**Author's Note:**

> Based loosely on this post:  
> http://nightvaleheadcanons.tumblr.com/post/62682234338/both-cecil-and-steve-carlsburg-are-originally-from
> 
> I purposely left any and all descriptors out, so I apologize if anything is a little odd because of that.  
> I also like to think that, if that headcanon were true, Cecil's mother would have slowly been driven nuts by Strexcorp.
> 
> Title from 'Shake it Out' by Florence + The Machine

Cecil stared up at his mother from the sidewalk, blinking tears out of his eyes as she fussed with the fall of his bangs.

"I don’t want to go to school," he whimpered, clutching desperately at the straps of his purple backpack.

"I know, sweetheart," she murmured to her son, biting her lip for a moment, before pressing a quick kiss to his cheek and straightening up, "But you must. Just remember, smile! Always smile, my sweet! And don’t let anyone see your forehead."

Cecil swallowed thickly as his mother gave him a stern glare, before smiling at him and returning to the car. He waved at her as she drove away, before slowly turning to face the large brick building which had petrified him since his mother had told him about it. The Elementary School, where he would learn all he needed to know about the world. Or, as much of it as he was allowed, his mother told him, snatching away a book he’d been trying to sound his way through.

He sighed heavily as he trundled his way inside, skirting around other children eager to get to their classes before the teachers arrived. Finally, upon arriving at his designated class room, he decided it couldn’t be all that bad. What with the shelves upon shelves of books and magazines, and the bright colours scattered all about the room. Not to mention his fellow classmates seemed friendly enough, one girl even beckoning him to sit next to her.

~

School was the most wretched place on earth.

Cecil ducked beneath the slide, skidding a little in the gravel as he tucked himself away, chest heaving as he tried to suck air back into his lungs.

"Come out, come out, wherever you are! Freak!"

The day had begun so well. Cecil had made a few tentative friends, the teacher had been nice enough, and he’d been allowed to pick a book from the shelf to read all by himself. But, of course, as his mother always warned; be careful of things that seem benevolent.

A wayward backpack had been Cecil’s downfall. He’d tripped rather unceremoniously, landing gracelessly on his stomach. And when he’d rolled over to accept the outstretched hand of one of his classmates, his bangs had fallen out of their careful placement.

The whole class had stopped and turned when the little girl who’d gone to help Cecil back up screamed. Cecil panicked and brushed his bangs forward, but the damage had been done. At least half of his class had caught sight of the closed third eye on his forehead, and those who hadn’t were quickly filled in by the others.

By lunchtime, Cecil was branded a ‘freak’. One of the children even going so far as to pipe up that he’d heard rumors about Cecil’s mother going off to ‘that weird place’ Night Vale, and coming back pregnant.

The teacher had stepped in at that point, calming the children down and setting them about their work once more, though the disgusted glance she shot Cecil was not missed by the child. He shuffled back to his chair, wincing a bit as he felt spit balls hit the back of his head, making no mention of it to his teacher.

~

"I told you," Cecil’s mother scolded, waving butter knife through the air, as she had been preparing his lunch for the next day, "I told you not to let them see! The children here will not spare you now."

Cecil sniffled, splaying his arm across the table he was sitting at, and cradling his cheek with his elbow. “I know,” he whimpered, blinking up at his mother as she clucked her tongue and busied herself around the kitchen. “I’m sorry, Mama.”

Finally, she turned with a sad sigh, setting a couple of cookies on the table and ruffling her son’s hair. “I know, sweetheart. Just be aware that you’ll get no peace at school, now,” she warned, poking Cecil lightly on the nose as she went back to making his lunch.

Cecil munched on his cookies for a moment, before looking to his mother imploringly. “Why can’t we just move away? To Night Vale? That’s where I’m from, isn’t it?”

His mother’s back stiffened, the knife in her hand clattering to the counter, before she turned to Cecil with a forced smile on her lips. “Oh, baby,” she cooed, waltzing over to the table and crouching before her son, “Don’t ever go to Night Vale. It is a terrible place.”

The look on his mother’s face was more than enough to frighten Cecil out of his thoughts of running away to their neighboring city.

~

Cecil kept his gaze stuck to the polished marble floors as he quickly shuffled down the hallway towards his classroom, ignoring the insults and wadded up balls of paper that flew at him as he went. The summer of his sixteenth birthday had come and gone, and along with it came the blossoming of his birthmark. His mother had told him it was normal for boys like Cecil at his age, with a strained grin on her lips that seemed thinner and thinner with every passing year.

The small, faint purple mark that had resided in the center of his chest as long at he could remember had grown, seemingly overnight, upon his birthday. The single, simple line had split, widening into an ornate looking eye, while tendrils of purple had curled their way around his rib cage, and up over his shoulders. They, luckily, didn’t extend past the cuff of his t-shirt, but every simple shift of his arm gave glimpse to the purple swirls hidden beneath. He hoped they never grew beyond that.

Over the years, Cecil became accustomed to the hurtful, and sometimes shameful remarks the other children in his schools called him. “Tricyclopse”, “Night Val-ien”, and “Abomination” were the most frequent to grace his presence whenever he walked into a room. The last thing he wanted was to add fuel to the fire with the addition of swirling purple marks all over his body.

"Hey, Baldwin!" a familiar voice called down the hallway, causing Cecil to turn, eyes wide as none other than Steve Carlsberg wandered down the hallway, a great shit-eating grin spread across his face.

Cecil swallowed thickly as Steve crowded into his space with a couple of his usual cronies behind him, snickering stupidly to each other about something. Steve sneered as Cecil’s back hit the row of lockers along the way, forcing him to shrink a little as Steve slammed his palm into the locker door nearest Cecil’s shoulder.

"Chem lab. Did you do it?" Steve snarled, tipping his chin to indicate the books Cecil had clutched protectively to his chest.

"Yes," Cecil answered meekly, squeaking and ruffling through pages quickly when Steve did little more than rattle the lockers. This was a well practiced habit of the two. Steve would corner Cecil in the halls, demand whatever homework that had been assigned to be handed over, and then leave with a laugh at how pathetic Cecil was. Little did Steve know, of course, that Cecil couldn’t help but inhale a little deeper and flush a little darker every time Steve had him pinned to a locker. He would never do anything about his absolutely ridiculous crush while Steve’s cronies, and the general student body was around, of course, but he had entertained the idea once or twice of lifting up onto his toes to press a fleeting kiss to Steve’s lips. However, he had taken to writing up an extra set of assignments just for Steve.

"Thanks, freak," Steve snorted with a grin, snatching the pro-offered pages from Cecil’s grip, before finally backing off. The three said nothing as they moved away from Cecil, though Cecil really couldn’t help but watch them go with a hint of wistfulness. If he weren’t a freak, by all intents and standards, he often wondered if he would’ve stood a chance with Steve.

~

Cecil fidgeted slightly, picking at the cuffs of one of the long sleeved shirts he’d been forced into wearing, despite the heat of the desert, when his birthmarks had begun to slither further and further down his arms.

"Well? What is it?" Steve grunted, picking his way around one of the metal beams that helped to keep the football bleachers from collapsing down around them. "This better be important, Baldwin. I have practice to get to."

Cecil swallowed thickly, offering Steve a slightly wobbly smile. “W-well, Steve, y’see-” Cecil began, flinching when Steve huffed out an irritated sigh.

"Spit it out, Baldwin."

Cecil had to pause for the briefest of moment’s to savor the sound of his last name on Steve’s tongue. Steve was one of the very few in the entire school who had even ever deemed to call Cecil more than the degrading nicknames anyone and everyone could come up with.

"I just…I needed to tell you something. Something private. A-and this seemed like a good place to do it, since it’s so cliche on TV and all, so I figured I’d call you here-"

"Some time today, Baldwin."

"Right! Uh. Well. Steve, I-I really…I really like you. And I was wondering, if you wanted to, maybe, go out sometime. With me. N-not where anyone could see us, obviously, I know you have a reputation, but-"

Cecil paused in his ramblings, his own face paling as he took in the colour of scarlet that had quickly blossomed over Steve’s entire face. Cecil would have, perhaps, considered that a good sign, had it not been accompanied by a look of complete rage.

"Are you asking me out on a date?!" Steve roared, suddenly stalking towards Cecil, causing the smaller boy to scramble backwards over and around metal beams.

"N-not if you don’t want-" he began, nearly shrieking when Steve shook one of the bleachers support beams rather violently.

"What the ever loving fuck made you think I was gay?! Not to mention ever be the slightest bit interested in a freak like you?!" Steve boomed, bringing tears to Cecil’s eyes.

"I, I don’t know, I just thought-"

"No! You didn’t fucking think. Did you honestly ever believe someone like you would ever, EVER, find someone in all of Desert Bluffs who’d actually love you, let alone LIKE you?" Steve paused to snort loudly, a sinister grin splitting his face. "Oh, no. No, no. You’ll never find anyone, Freak. I’ll make sure of that."

Cecil gasped as he finally stumbled and fell backwards into the dirt as Steve turned on his heel and began to walk away. Cecil hiccuped quietly, waiting until Steve was out of earshot before burying his face into his knees and letting his sobs shake him to the core.

~

Cecil’s final year of high school was one he’d always categorize as his own personal year of hell. Gone were the simple catcalls of ‘abomination’ down the hall as he passed. To replace them, came gallons of tar to fill his locker, girls giggling behind him in class while they snipped away uneven chunks of his hair, the constant ache of his shoulders after repeatedly being slammed into lockers as he walked down the hallways, and the humiliation of the teachers turning a blind eye to it all.

Finally, after his last day of school, with his diploma clutched tightly in his fist and blood streaming down his nose from when he’d been punched, his mother, figuratively and literally, snapped.

"Cecil," she crooned, dabbing a kleenex under his nose to help clean up the blood, "My poor, poor Cecil. My baby boy, who is all grown up and has so much potential in his future." She laughed as fat tears began to roll down her cheeks, her eyes hollow. "You need to leave this place," she stated, barely registering as the phone suddenly began to ring, "You need to run far, far away from Desert Bluffs." A pounding on the door shortly followed the phones shrill rings. "You need to leave this place, and never come back," she shrieked over all the noise, as the kitchen window began to rattle. "RUN TO NIGHT VALE, SWEETHEART. NEVER LOOK BACK AT THIS GOD FORESAKEN PLACE."

Cecil screamed as the kitchen window shattered, ducking away from the flying shards of glass as his mother shoved a backpack into his arms, before unceremoniously pushing him out the back kitchen door, and slamming it after him.

Cecil didn’t spare a look behind him as he began to run, the hysterical laughter of his mother echoing down the street.

~

"Hello, my dear," a gentle voice called, causing Cecil to look up, squinting against the searing light of the desert sun. He swallowed at the lack of liquid in his mouth, forcing his dry lips into as close of an approximation of a smile as he could get.

"Hi," he replied, his voice rasping with lack of water, as he finally let his feet pause in their laborious quest to drag him to Night Vale when he reached the fuzzy tufts of grass at the edge of what appeared to be a rather poorly kept lawn.

An older lady sat on the porch of a rather rickety looking house, her rocking chair creaking ominously with every move as she smiled back at Cecil. “You look tired, dear,” she called, waving at him to come closer.

Cecil shifted, scuffing the toe of his shoe against the grass, before slowly inching forward. He knew he probably shouldn’t approach, as one glance at his well exposed third eye and curling designs over his arms, and she would surely screech at him to begone. But, he really had so very little to lose.

"Oh, and sun burnt, too, poor thing," the lady said, shoving herself up and out of her rocking chair with a groan as Cecil ascended the three rickety stairs up onto her porch.

Cecil flinched mildly when the woman reached out, an expression of surprise flickering onto his face when she did little more than ruffle his hair affectionately.

"You look like you could use a rest," she cooed, circling her arm around Cecil’s shoulders and leading him towards her front door, "My name is Josie."

~

"A friendly desert community where the sun is hot, the moon is beautiful, and mysterious lights pass overhead while we all pretend to sleep.

Welcome to Night Vale.”


End file.
